Today’s editorials
The Hindu: In ‘Cognisant of constraints’, Hindu says the recommendations of the interim report of the 15th finance commission displayed “devolution mathematics” by maintaining a sizable cut in states’ shares. It ensured that states which performed well on demographic management were not unfairly disadvantaged. It appreciates that the commission has been critical of the Union and State government’s spendings through off-budget borrowings.
The Indian Express: In ‘Optics and Illusions’, Express is skeptical of the ambitious numbers presented in Budget 2020 on the basis of past experiences. Looking at the economic slowdown, it’s debatable whether the growth in tax collection is even achievable, it writes.
Hindustan Times: The restructuring of the Ministry of External Affairs will help make the ministry more responsible to deal with challenges in diplomacy, believes HT. In ‘Welcoming the MEA overhaul’, it lauds the step and says that controlled and calculated diplomacy is the need of the hour.
The Times of India: The rapid global spread of the coronavirus will test the public healthcare system of nations, including India, writes TOI. It suggests that India maintain high vigil at airports and compile the primary and secondary contact list of those exposed to the persons affected, in ‘Containing Coronavirus’.
The Opinion Makers
The Indian Express
Pratap Bhanu Mehta | Contributing editor, The Indian Express
Mehta finds Budget 2020 disappointing — it reads like a five-year-plan, with objectives and targets but no road map, he writes. “The problem is that most of the government buys its own rhetoric of success and so year after year, a finance minister comes to the country with the same problems that remain unfixed, he writes. The Budget can be criticised for its lack of boldness. But in a way, that is the most honest thing about it.”
Saugata Bhattacharya | Senior vice president, business and economic research, Axis Bank.
Like Mehta, Bhattacharya is unimpressed — the Budget strikes him more like a statement of account. But he thinks it’s done its best to stimulate the economy given the paucity of resources.
“Fostering trust was also repeatedly emphasised in the Budget speech…A significant step forward is the proposed amendments in the Companies Act for removing criminal liability for acts which are civil in nature,” he says.
Hindustan Times
The national security threat from within
Brahma Chellaney | Geostrategist
Chellaney argues that India’s most pressing threat comes from internal polarised politics, not from its neighbours. “The world’s largest democracy has been in crisis for long. Its systemic problems have an important bearing on national security. Coping with mounting regional-security challenges while managing internal divisions will prove onerous unless India finds ways to control its growing divide,” he writes.
Budget 2020: Tactics over strategy
Suyash Rai | Fellow at Carnegie India
The only way to understand the Budget is to focus on fiscal deficit, taxes, and expenditure, writes Rai.
On expenditure outlays, “two things are becoming clear” he writes: “First, while the government has reformed the mechanisms of expenditure — of procurement processes and scale-up of direct benefit transfer — it has little imagination to strategise on expenditure allocation…Second, some of the decisions taken during the previous tenure of the government are showing their consequences.”
The Hindu
Ram Singh | Professor, Delhi School of Economics
Singh argues that economic outlook rests on whether the government will meet its investment targets and keeping promises made to stakeholders.
“…the future of the economy will turn on whether the government walks the talk in terms of public investment and the promises made to different sections of society including the taxpayer and companies. When it comes to reviving private sentiments, actions will speak much louder than the budgetary promises.”
It’s time for the Shaheen Bagh protests to end
Mohammad Ayoob | University distinguished professor emeritus of international relations, Michigan State University
Away from the budget, Ayoob advises the Shaheen Bagh protesters to wind up their demonstration because people are now becoming pawns in an electoral game.
“It is time for the protesters to recognise that their actions are leading to far more negative outcomes than positive ones. The entire exercise has outlived its usefulness.’’
He adds that they have met their objective already: “…they have squarely registered their dissent against the CAA and successfully linked the discussion of the CAA with the National Register of Citizens.”
Business Standard
Mihir Sharma | Economist and senior fellow at ORF
Sharma argues that the Budget had two options — to ignore fiscal constraints in order to stimulate demand in the short run or to exercise restraint and push for structural reforms. Sitharaman chose the middle path: “The fiscal glide path was altered — on paper — only as much as the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act allows, while spending was controlled, but not to the degree that might be warranted, given the crunch in revenue.”
Blaming the Budget? Blame your beliefs
Debashis Basu | The writer is the editor of www.moneylife.in
Basu is cutting about the Budget: “…two and a half hours of a torturous exercise in minor rearranging the pieces of a complex economic chessboard.” The reason so many “thoughtful, accomplished” people who had high hopes of the Budget got it wrong was because of ‘false belief or willful blindness’.
“You can have all the facts and make the right diagnosis about the current situation, and then spoil it all by taking a leap of faith, using false beliefs as your stepping stones,” he diagnoses.
The Economic Times
Arvind Panagriya | Professor of economics, Columbia University, US
Panagriya identifies three things he likes about the Budget: Sitharaman’s fiscal discipline, reforms in personal income tax and the aggressive programme of privatisation. However, the measure announced in international trade is “worrisome”, he says.
More Wisdom, Less Secrecy Please
Parth J. Shah | Co-founder, Indian School of Public Policy
Shah calls for removal of “the firewall between the teams that wrote the Economic Survey and the Budget” since the survey has been “more prescient in articulating India’s challenges and possible solutions”. He adds, “…the budget has thousands of tweaks but hardly any towering reforms”.
Mint
A Fourth global tsunami of debt
Kaushik Basu | Professor of economics at Cornell University and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
“It is not too late for countries to build seawalls against debt tsunamis,” writes Basu, poetically. He notes that in India’s case, “expansionary fiscal policy” could withstand a debt wave.
The Financial Express
Sonal Verma | chief India economist
Aurodeep Nandi | India economist
Verma and Nandi argue that the Budget chose the “middle path…which will be growth-neutral in the short run, while the return of fiscal consolidation as a broader policy objective should be a medium-term positive”. They argue that by setting a more conservative fiscal deficit for the next fiscal, “the government signalled that it sees limited scope for consumption-led stimulus”.
Meghnad Desai | Prominent economist & Labour peer
Desai is impressed by Sitharaman’s more “assured performance” at this year’s Budget than last year’s. He adds that while the tax cut will catch headlines, it will have little impact. Furthermore, “The small, but peculiar, protectionist gesture of taxing imports of medical equipment because India now had an adequate domestic supply made no sense except as a signal that this is the way of the future.”
The Hindu Business Line
A Budget for reforms with continuity
Ashima Goyal | Professor, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research
Goyal defends the Budget, saying many reforms have been made to reverse the slowdown. “The vision articulated was marked by continuity with a focus on reform and inclusion, in the context of India’s youth and therefore new technology advantage,” she writes.
No clear strategy for an economic recovery
Narendar Pani | Professor at the School of Social Science, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru
Pani, in contrast, is disappointed: the “striking aspect” of the Budget was “its lack of conviction”. By example he cites the new tax slabs, where Sitharaman laid “out a completely new regime, doing away with virtually all deductions and doubling the number of slabs”. Then, she doubted her own decision and made it optional.